Lawmakers not working for public good, survey says

By Chris Wang / Staff reporter

Fri, Jun 14, 2013 - Page 3

A majority of people believe that legislators, regardless of their party affiliation, place their parties, families, factions or specific interest groups far above the needs of the public, a public opinion poll showed yesterday.

The survey, conducted by Taiwan Indicator Survey Research (TISR), found that only 16.7 percent of respondents said they were satisfied with the performance of lawmakers, while 61.5 percent said they were unsatisfied and 33.3 percent did not answer.

More than half, or 57.2 percent, of those polled said the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) legislative majority was not helpful to effective governance by President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, a TISR press release said.

Asked for whose benefit KMT lawmakers worked, 26.4 percent of respondents said they worked primarily for their party, followed by 19.7 percent who cited businesses and specific groups, while families and factions was chosen by 18.7 percent.

Only 7.5 percent of respondents said that KMT lawmakers strived for the benefit of the public, slightly above the 7.1 percent who said lawmakers work for voters in their constituencies.

Respondents’ impressions of the Democratic Progresive Party (DPP) were similar, with 26.3 percent saying that the party mattered most to DPP lawmakers, while 17.3 percent said DPP lawmakers sought advantages for their families and factions.

However, in contrast with the KMT, 16 percent of respondents said that DPP legislators cared most about the welfare of the public, while 8 percent of those polled said DPP lawmakers sought benefits for businesses and specific interests groups.

According to the poll, 55.6 percent of respondents have forgotten who they voted for in the legislative elections in January last year, with only 23.6 percent remembering who they voted for.

The survey also showed that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) credibility rating of 21.4 percent was the lowest since he was first inaugurated in May 2008, while his approval rating stood at a low 17.3 percent.

Meanwhile, the disapproval rating for Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺), at 47.3 percent, was the highest since he took the post in February, the poll found.

The survey, conducted on Monday and Tuesday, collected 1,005 valid samples and had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.